SPARC520 goes public TechCrunch (or deep thoughts on collaboration in design)

This last year at SPARC has been a pretty trans-formative experience for me. As someone who is use to designing everything, to a role now where I lead others and offer guidance towards how the design should work. It hasn’t been an easy transition – learning to delegate and learning how to improve communication to other designers. Not a new experience, but much more of it that I’d previously had. The other challenge is “what am I creating”. The emphasis on “I”; good designers have to be a little selfish and a little passionate. It’s in our nature and to ignore it is to just be submissive. So now I have 4 other designers who look for me on guidance from priorities to major UI decisions. It’s rewarding in ways that designing isn’t and the learning process is really rewarding. The struggle becomes, what am I creating? What did I do yesterday? Well, many things, but very little I can point at and say “I” did this.

So, yesterday’s article on techcrunch.com was awesome publicity for SPARC and our product(s). It was fun to send out to Mom and tell my friends about. But it also left me introspective about the selflessness of good design and truly what my role in the collaboration means. http://techcrunch.com/2012/07/11/va-goes-green-with-sparc520/